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en-usTechdirt. Stories filed under "ctia"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Fri, 12 Sep 2014 14:48:44 PDTWireless Providers Desperate Not To Be Subject To Net Neutrality RulesMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140911/13490628496/wireless-providers-desperate-not-to-be-subject-to-net-neutrality-rules.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140911/13490628496/wireless-providers-desperate-not-to-be-subject-to-net-neutrality-rules.shtmlcrack down on anti-competitive behaviors by the industry. He even indicated that the FCC may finally be considering the idea that any net neutrality regulations should apply to wireless as well. As you may recall, the 2010 open internet rules (the ones mostly struck down by an appeals court back in February) never applied to wireless -- and the wireless providers would desperately like to keep it that way.

A little birdie attending the CTIA show sent over this flier, noting that it's being dumped everywhere around the conference, with a focus on places where tech company folks may be lingering.

If you can't see it, it's an awkwardly worded attempt to argue repeatedly that wireless should not be subject to any net neutrality rules because "wireless is different." Of course, most of the "differences" can be summed up as "we have much more limited capacity, and there's a lot more high-bandwidth traffic moving to wireless, so please, please, please let us block the kind of traffic we can't shakedown with a profitable tollbooth."

It's true that there are some different demands and limitations on wireless networks, but none of that supports the idea that it should be able to break neutrality and pick winners and losers. In fact, since so much more traffic is moving to wireless networks and bandwidth capacity has been improving, it seems like better reasons to subject wireless carriers to net neutrality rules. Oh, and in case you're wondering, this isn't even an issue of reclassifying from Title I to Title II. Most mobile operators already are under Title II, and, contrary to what the wired broadband guys will tell you, it hasn't hurt investment in that space.

Of course, it seems rather silly and tone deaf for the wireless operators to be pushing this on the tech folks at CTIA's own conference. The tech industry clearly supports a more open and free internet, with fewer tollbooths and discrimination. Pitching them that wireless is somehow "different" isn't likely to win any fans. And that's doubly true considering that many in the tech industry still clearly remember the "bad old days," prior to the iPhone and Android when the only way to get your app on a phone was to have a mobile operator agree to let it be on the phone. Those were the days where people made a big business out of "introducing" startups to the mobile operators, so they could beg, plead and eventually pay their way onto a phone. Those weren't good days for innovation on the phone. While the mobile operators haven't yet been able to go back to that sort of tollbooth, if they had the power to they would. It was the tech industry that broke down those walled gardens, and you'd better believe the operators would love to have them back, even as the broken down walls made their phones and services more valuable.

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]]>because-of-coursehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140911/13490628496Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:30:00 PDTFCC's Tom Wheeler Suggests He Will Crack Down On Anti-Consumer Practices By Mobile OperatorsMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140910/07010428479/fccs-tom-wheeler-suggests-he-will-crack-down-anti-consumer-practices-mobile-operators.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140910/07010428479/fccs-tom-wheeler-suggests-he-will-crack-down-anti-consumer-practices-mobile-operators.shtmlTom Wheeler is continuing to talk the talk concerning actually putting in place more meaningful rules to protect consumers from telco/internet gatekeepers. The big question is still whether he'll get around to walking the walk. Last week, he gave a strong speech on the lack of real competition in broadband. And this week, he gave a talk at the big CTIA (mobile operators') trade show in which he didn't do the usual suck-up to the industry that we've come to expect in the past, but suggested that the industry needs to shape up. While it starts out with some rhetoric about how he's there to "aggressively represent the best interests of his client," who he notes is "the American people," he does call out some questionable practices by the carriers, including hinting that the net neutrality / open internet rules may be the tool he uses against them:

Recently, I sent letters to the four national wireless providers, asking them about their network management practices. We are very concerned about the possibility that some customers are being singled out for disparate treatment even though they have paid for the capacity that is being throttled. And we are equally concerned that customers may have been led to purchase devices relying on the
promise of unlimited usage only to discover, after the device purchase, that they are subject to throttling.

I am hard pressed to understand how either practice, much less the two together, could be a reasonable
way to manage a network.

Our Open Internet proceeding will look closely at both the question of what is “reasonable” and the
related subject of how network management practices can be transparent to consumers and edge
providers.

One of the big loopholes of the original rules was that they didn't apply to wireless at all, which was part of the reason why companies like Verizon started focusing more on wireless instead of wired broadband. Wheeler notes that the proposed rules keep it that way, but hints about changing it, given that the landscape is changing:

As evidenced by the growth in this industry over the past decade, mobile wireless broadband is a key
component of that virtuous cycle.... One of the constant themes on the record is how consumers increasingly rely on mobile broadband as an
important pathway to access the Internet. Microsoft, for instance, told the Commission that because we live in what they called a “mobile first”
world, “There is no question that mobile broadband access services must be subject to the same legal
framework as fixed broadband access services.” Thousands of consumers have echoed that sentiment.

The Commission’s previous Open Internet rules distinguished between fixed and mobile, and our
tentative conclusion in this new rulemaking suggested the Commission should maintain the same
approach going forward.
In this proceeding, however, we specifically recognized that there have been significant changes in the
mobile marketplace since 2010.
We sought comment about whether these changes should lead us to revise our treatment of mobile
broadband services.
The basic issue that is raised is whether the old assumptions upon which the 2010 rules were based match
new realities.

It's also nice to see that he's speaking up for competition, and suggests he doesn't believe consolidation is good for consumers:

This industry has always told policy makers, “We’re different, we’re competitive.” But in the last couple of years the FCC and the Department of Justice have had to be poised to intervene
to protect that dynamic.
First it was AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile.
Most recently the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and I were outspoken in discouraging Sprint’s
potential acquisition of T-Mobile.

The American consumer has been the beneficiary: new pricing and new services that have been spurred
by competition.
I know that achieving scale is good economics, and that there is a natural economic incentive to accrue
ever-expanding scale.
We will continue to be skeptical of efforts to achieve scale through the consolidation of major players.

He further notes that the mobile world shows that when there is more competition, investment follows, which counters the big telco/broadband claims that consolidation and less competition will lead to greater investment.

The mobile industry has proven that competition drives capital investment.
Equally important, you have shown that competition and investment are not mutually exclusive.
In the past 10 years, the mobile industry has invested $260 billion to build competitive infrastructure

And getting back to the issue of net neutrality, he notes that competition alone doesn't appear to be enough to ensure an open internet where the operators aren't picking winners and losers:

One of the great facilitators of competition for online services is the open design of the Internet.
I remember when this industry was united around the walled garden where the only apps that reached the
consumer were those which the carrier approved, usually in return for a payment.
That wasn’t a good environment for innovation, or the expansion of consumer services, or the industry for
that matter.
The fast pace of technology which we have been discussing effectively destroyed those walls.
Once the world went IP it was possible to leap the garden wall and discover the abundance of an open
ecosystem.
And just look at the results!
But it is instructive that the walled garden existed despite multi-carrier competition.
At least in the short run, this suggests that competition does not assure openness.

This is great to see, as it's much more typical of the FCC boss at such events to pander to the audience. Wheeler doesn't do that at all. If anything, this speech is him giving them a pretty big warning shot (he also does this on the issue of spectrum auctions, but this post is getting long enough...).

Again, it's nice (and somewhat refreshing) to see Wheeler saying these kinds of things. In fact, he's been saying a lot of the right things over the past few months. The real question is if the actions will follow the words. Having seen an FCC that has failed to follow through for so many years, it pays to be skeptical until we see actual results. But, as a starting point, saying the right things is better than the opposite.

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]]>talking-the-talkhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140910/07010428479Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:25:00 PDTWireless Industry Association Opposes Bill That Would Require Warrant For Them To Turn Data Over To Law EnforcementMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20120423/13384918616/wireless-industry-association-opposes-bill-that-would-require-warrant-them-to-turn-data-over-to-law-enforcement.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20120423/13384918616/wireless-industry-association-opposes-bill-that-would-require-warrant-them-to-turn-data-over-to-law-enforcement.shtmlis opposing an effort in California to require mobile operators to require a warrant before disclosing personal info. The bill also requires some basic reporting requirements for the companies, having them say how often info has been disclosed (hardly onerous info to track). Basically, the law asks that the mobile operators respect the 4th Amendment when dealing with law enforcement -- something that the federal government has been successfully chipping away at for years.

But the CTIA is against all of this (pdf), claiming that it would be "confusing" for mobile operators.

... the wireless industry opposes SB 1434 as it could create greater confusion for wireless providers when responding to legitimate law enforcement requests

The crux of the "confusion" apparently is that the definitions in the bill are somewhat broader than what the industry says is standard, and they're afraid that this means "It could place providers in the position of
requiring warrants for all law enforcement requests." I'm struggling to see what the problem is here. What's wrong with requiring warrants?

The letter also fails to explain why the reporting requirements would be so "burdensome," other than the claim that providers already "are working day and night to assist law enforcement to ensure the public’s safety and to save
lives." So, if I read this right, they're arguing that they're already so busy responding to law enforcement that telling users that your personal data is being handed over to the government willy nilly is, you know, too much effort.

The ACLU is calling out the industry for this move -- noting that it seems to have no problem spending all these resources passing on all of our info -- why can't it spend a little defending its subscribers' rights too?

California is supposed to vote on this bill shortly. Hopefully, the state sees through these baseless claims from CTIA.

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]]>do-they-not-care-about-their-users?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120423/13384918616Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:59:00 PDTPre-Brief Of The Upcoming CTIA ConferenceDerek Kertonhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090330/2030174313.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090330/2030174313.shtmlWith the US mobile phone industry's leading conference kicking off in Las Vegas, I thought it might be fun to write a small "pre-brief" of the trends to expect from the show. This CTIA Show comes close on the heels of the huge, Europe-based Mobile World Congress, and I would have dropped a blog post from there...if my Netbook hadn't been stolen! Here's what to expect from the CTIA show:

App Stores: What was innovative about Apple's App Store? It is a single point of sales, it's trusted, compatible, it offers tested apps, and it gives a large (70%) revenue share to the application developer. Nothing new there, but damn, what a success. Once again, Apple succeeded by (not doing anything revolutionary, but) using a simple recipe that makes sense and motivates all stakeholders. Sadly, a similar 'imode' app store has been done by DoCoMo in Japan since 2000, but North American carrier imitations usually neglect being remotely 'open' and don't offer a large revenue share to developers. Turns out, this is fairly important if you want to stimulate a large, diverse offering of useful, high-quality applications. Anyway, all those companies that didn't copy imode are now copying Apple, so expect to see more news around Microsoft's store, RIM Blackberry's store, the Android store, and more. The trend is good, since it will get more money in developers' hands, and should help some phone owners find applications that make their devices more valuable.

Mobile Broadband/Embedded Broadband: There will be lots of talk and probably a bunch of announcements about mobile broadband access at the show. I am referring specifically to the use of cellular broadband modems in devices that are not phones, such as Netbooks, Laptops, cameras, readers, media players, etc. I am moderating a panel on this subject at the CTIA show, and I'm thrilled to be doing it, because it is such a major trend. The two driving forces to this trend are the 3G networks that are already in place, and carrier willingness to sell new kinds of service plans. Carriers have been somewhat stuck in a rut of thinking of mobile access as "one phone, one contract, $60/mo." But recently, their thinking has been changing, and the notion of wholesale businesses of selling connections to devices like Amazon's Kindle is gaining steam. Expect to see more news of daily connection plans for laptops (like Wi-Fi Hotspots), and wireless data bundled in the price of other consumer electronics.

Femtocells: A femtocell is a small box that looks like a Wi-Fi router, and similarly plugs in at your home or small office. But instead or routing laptops to the Internet, a femtocell routes telephone calls from your mobile phone to your carrier. Put one of these in a home or office with poor cell reception, and instantly get four bars. That's good for you and the carrier, who gets to keep you as a customer. But what also benefits the carrier is that your phone's traffic is now carried over your broadband connection, saving their towers from having to allocate capacity to you. Sprint has it, T-Mobile uses a special variant, Verizon has recently launched it, and AT&T is piloting these devices. I expect femtocells to successfully creep into the marketplace, and we'll hear a fair bit about femtocells at the show, but also other new ways of delivering cellular service like Distributed Antenna Systems, Repeaters, and such.

Backhaul: Wireless data use is taking off. Driven by flat rates, popular and easy to use phones like iPhone, and supplemented by growing use of cellular modems to laptops and Netbooks, people are finally exchanging significant amounts of data traffic from cell towers. But these towers were initially put in place for highly compressed, narrowband voice traffic. As such, each tower was often connected by a meager T1 line. The connection that the towers have to the core network is called "backhaul," and yesterday's backhaul is woefully inadequate for tomorrow's data traffic loads. The short-term solution was to just add more T1s...but the costs of this rapidly become prohibitive. So the long-term solutions that will be discussed at length in Las Vegas are point-to-point microwave wireless relays, metro Ethernet, and fiber optic connections.

The Palm Pre: I'm not sure when the bandwagon is going to hit the trail for this device, but I'm saddling up right now. I've been negative on Palm for a while, but I saw the Pre at CES in January and was pleasantly surprised, but unfortunately didn't allocate much time to Palm. Subsequently, I spent some time with the Pre at MWC in February, and was very impressed. Of all the phones I have seen since the iPhone came out, this is the first one that I think may be better -- and I am very fond of the iPhone. I use a very powerful HTC Windows phone, and when I see the Pre in action, I find myself repeatedly saying "I wish my phone could do that." 'Synergy,' the Pre's ability to pull together your contacts, emails, calendars into one consolidated view, is a favorite element. But what really struck me was the User Interface, which is very visual, very touch, and very intuitive. I felt the same way I felt when I first saw the iPhone in action. The Pre is not an evolution of previous Palms. It is a new starting point, and like the iPhone, it seems devoid of classic silo thinking and lousy UI baggage. I can't predict whether the developer community will rally around the Pre, or whether Sprint and Palm will be successful in selling big volumes, but I want to call this one early: the Pre is a great smartphone.

More iPhone "killers": We've seen handset vendors offer so-called iPhone Killers at every turn since June 2007. I have found almost every such claim to be unfounded over the past 2 years. I have written that a touch screen and square icons do not an iPhone Killer make. But quarter-by-quarter, the competitors' claims get more and more credible. While HTC, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, and LG make incremental progress to matching the iconic device, I think Palm has the real bomb to drop, if they manage to get the Pre to market on time.

Android: The past year was almost devoid of Android handset announcements. Barcelona was strangely silent on that front. In fact, we haven't heard much about new Android handhelds since the T-Mo G1 was announced early in 2008! But there's enough rumors floating around to suspect a batch of Android announcements this week. Let's wait and see.

Google Voice: Google recently announced their Google Voice service, and it has created quite a stir in the industry. The fixed carriers have long felt threatened by Google, although the search giant had yet to fire a shot across the mobile carriers' bow. So long as it stayed in search, email, web VoIP, advertising, and location services, Google was only a thorn in the cellcos' side. But with the addition of Google Voice (GV), Google is now going straight at the heart of the carrier's core service. GV is essentially a disintermediation play, where users will use just one phone number, provided by Google, and can intelligently route and manage their phone calls to desk, cellphone, voicemail, email, etc., by using a web dashboard interface. By using a Google phone number, users needn't even tell anyone their cellular or landline numbers -- the carriers become pipes for the Google Voice customer. Expect to see and hear some responses, which have already started from other newcomers like Skype, or classic solution vendors like AlcaLu.

Meet Huawei: If you are not familiar with this company yet, better learn how to pronounce the name. Huawei is the leading example of the next generation of telecom infrastructure providers out of China. They have been selling competitive equipment for years, but carriers in Western countries have been reluctant to adopt their products based on a perceived quality gap with leading vendors like Ericsson, Nortel, Motorola, and Alcatel-Lucent. But the winds are shifting. Tougher economic times, paired with some successful Huawei reference cases in Leap Wireless, Cox cable, and Canadian telcos, prove that Huawei can compete on quality and price. Huawei is growing its presence in the US, recently opening offices here in Silicon Valley. Could a major US carrier deal be in the making?

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]]>Too-Soon-For-A-De-Briefhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090330/2030174313Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:07:57 PDTWhat's Al Gore Got To Hide From The Mobile Industry Trade Press?Carlo Longinohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090320/1456044199.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090320/1456044199.shtmlwanted the press banned from attending his speech, as he's tried to do before. Call us crazy, but usually when you're speaking to advance a cause (as we thought Gore was doing with his environmental activism), press coverage is a good thing. Unless, of course, perhaps your attempts to ban press coverage are really just attempts to try and protect the big speaking fees you collect. Perhaps, though, all the attention in the mobile-industry trade press has caused an about-face. The page on the CTIA web site about keynote addresses used to contain the admonition that "VP Gore's keynote address is closed to the press", as the Google Cache version shows. But that line's been dropped from the currently live version. Maybe Gore and his people figuring out that an audience at a cell-phone trade show will probably be full of people with, you know, cell phones, who will send out Twitter messages and moblog posts and all kinds of other info from the speech? Even if the press is banned, the press will be there, and details of his speech will get out. Somehow it seems the more likely reason is the CTIA and Gore just don't want to look like censors.